Data Runner (6 page)

According to the monitor, the next train is only three minutes away. I check my watch and lean over the platform to scan the tunnel. There is a very sharp bend coming into the station so I won't see the train's headlamp until the last second. I look around.

Standing there with my backpack over my shoulder, I look like any other upscale student on his way to a Free City charter school. And now that I've introduced a dollop of hair gel into my mane, I blend into the Free City crowd even more than I did when I was an actual member of it. It throws me at first. Every time I catch sight of myself in a reflective surface it's like I'm looking at a much more stylized version of myself. Dare I say, a cooler me? It reminds me at once of all those rich kids who would return to school each fall glistening with Mediterranean tans, sporting styles so new they haven't even made the fashion magazines yet.

Passing a few girls on the platform, I catch a few looks that might even convince me I am one of them, if not for that damn itch on my arm. Well, not an itch exactly—just an acute awareness of the chip in my flesh loaded with data. I try not to favor my arm in any way, try to remain calm, nonchalant, but it's hard. It's hard because I know it's there, and now I have this uncontrollable urge to clutch it. I know it's all in my head, that the data itself is just a bunch of zeros and ones that has no tangible feeling whatsoever, but in my mind it's like I can feel its pulse in that spot on my forearm. It's like that phantom limb thing, only in reverse.

A glint of light appears on the tunnel wall.

By now I have strolled to the end of the platform so I can see everything at a glance. I look around as casually as I can. Mostly it's men and women in business suits with a handful of students mixed in.

I check my watch. Observe my surroundings. Wait.

The splash of light on the tunnel wall grows stronger by the second until the train finally comes barreling into the station.

The doors open to let passengers off, and I find myself scanning them as well, wondering if this is what Snake meant when he told me to be hypervigilant. I hope it is because at that moment I'm not sure what else I can do. I step aboard the train. There are plenty of seats but I figure it's probably better to stay on my feet. The doors chime and close behind me. The train lurches forward. I grab a strap and hang on. Because I was standing at the end of the platform, I am now riding in the last car of the train. I figure this is smart because the end cars usually have the fewest riders. Fewer people means fewer people to keep my eye on.

The train picks up speed. And soon the fast dolly of the empty platform through the window of the subway car abruptly wipes to darkness, leaving only my reflection in the interior glass.

A girl my age wearing comm shades stares despondently into her music.

A girl in a black hoodie sits with her arms folded and her head down.

Two men in business suits chat.

A cute redhead wearing a crested blazer over a tartan skirt operates her thin screen. She's the one I linger on. Her legs have minor scrapes here and there that are probably from field hockey or some other extracurricular sport. I can't make out which school her crest belongs to, but it is definitely one of the Free City charter schools.

A few others.

This is how it is for the next few minutes, me minding all of them as they mind themselves, frozen in their daily commutes. I begin to wonder if maybe I'm taking the whole thing a bit too seriously. I take a breath and let my shoulders relax. Body armor. Hypervigilance. It's all well and good but I'm on a moving train now. What could possibly happen?

As if on cue, the sliding door to the forward car gets thrown open so hard it actually rebounds closed and has to be opened again.

The Japanese man who enters has a large curl of hair not unlike a surfing wave covering the top-right quadrant of his face. He is slender and wears a very expensive suit under an equally fine overcoat. Behind him enters a big round blob of a man who only takes shape after he squeezes through the door. This one has a shaved head and thin goatee and wears an electric-blue tracksuit with white stripes running down the arms and legs. I see the trouble in his eyes the moment he enters.

Neither one looks at me. For a moment it seems as if they will pass right by me. Maybe they have business with someone else on the train, the two guys in suits perhaps, or maybe they just want to be at the back of the train. Who knows, who cares? Just so long as it doesn't involve me. But that all goes out the window the moment the big one turns to face me, effectively trapping me in the tiny nook between the seat and the door. The suited one grips my wrist with surprising strength for a man his size and forces two layers of sleeve up my arm. Smiles.

“Well, well, well, Gendo.
Miru
what we have here.”

The guy obviously speaks English, but for some reason he addresses me in Japanese. “
Ave-u desu ka
?”

He's just playing with me. It might have worked too, if I hadn't studied a year of Japanese back at the magnet academy. I nod.
Am I an Ave?
Yes, I'm an Ave. He's already seen the tag. There's no point denying it now. “
So
,” I answer

“
So ka?
” he sings. “
Nihongo o hanashimasu ka?
”

To the question ‘
you speak Japanese?
' I responded in the affirmative. “
Chyoto
,” I add.
A little
.

“
Subarashii!
” he says in a way that can only be sarcastic. “That is wonderful. You Aves are getting smarter with every new flock.”

I am in trouble. There is no question about it. I am in deep,
deep
trouble. I can't even scan the train for options because the big one is blocking my view.

“That is Gendo,” he says, referring to the mountain standing before me, “and you may call me Mr. Ito.”

“I'm not carrying anything,” I blurt. The moment the words leave my mouth I realize how desperate it sounds.

“No?” Mr. Ito shakes his head mockingly like an adult toying with a child. “Okay, then. I guess Ito and Gendo leave you alone.”

Everyone else has either exited the car or is standing by the far doors waiting to get off at the next station. They don't know what's going down, and they don't want to know. They just want to be off the train. I just want to be off the train.

Mr. Ito throws open his coat.

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes!”

Strapped to the inside of his coat is a katana.

Mr. Ito twirls it around the back of his hand and raises it to his downturned eyes. Slowly he pulls the steel from its sheath. Meticulously. Keeping a perfect line as he stares me down over the edge of the blade.

“What the hell is that for?” I press my back to the door, as if I don't already know.

Mr. Ito smiles. It is a gangster's smile, offered strictly for his own amusement. “This,” he catches my reflection in the blade, “this is not for making ice cream.” He pauses for drama like a bad actor. “Not
I
scream,” he finishes, “this is for making
you
scream.”

My mind starts racing. Best-case scenario—I come out of this a cripple.

Gendo grabs hold of my arm and pulls me off my feet. The next thing I know, I am on the floor of the train turning my body into his hold. The more he twists, the more I turn. I have to. It's the only way to keep him from breaking my arm. But even getting my arm broken would be preferable to what Mr. Ito has in store for me, as Gendo extends it for him. Mr. Ito rotates the blade in his hand.

“Wait, that won't work!” I yell over the screech of the train. “Cutting off my arm will only destroy the cargo. You won't get anything.”

The lights flicker.

“
Get?
” Mr. Ito laughs. “Who says we want to get anything?”

I have no idea what that means. I can't even imagine it. My mind draws a complete blank. My heart thumps a mile a minute as Mr. Ito raises his sword.

Then comes a girl's voice. “Excuse me.”

Gendo and Ito both turn, but from the floor of the train I can't see past them.

“Do you have the time?” she asks.

Her voice is timid, almost childlike.

“Time?” growls Mr. Ito. “This is the time for you to go away, little girl, before I cut you.”

Mr. Ito turns his attention away from her and back to my arm as he lifts the blade high over his head.
This is it
, I think in a full-fledged panic.
What a disaster. I'm going to get clipped on my very first run
. Mr. Ito's eyes go wide as his hands tighten around the grip. He clenches his teeth. The sword is ready to drop at any second. He tightens his hands even more, until they are too tight. Almost shaking. Shaking. And soon spittle flies out of his mouth. That's when I know something is happening. Even Gendo wonders what is going on as he turns to see what Mr. Ito is doing.

Then I hear the buzz, barely discernible over the noise of the train, but there nonetheless.

Mr. Ito collapses onto his side with the sword still in his hands, revealing the girl in the black hoodie standing behind him with a Taser. She pulls off her hood. For the first time I get a good look at her. She's not as young as she sounded. My age, maybe a year older. Her hair is jet black and curls just under her chin, and her skin is pale; a combination that makes her sky-blue eyes shine that much brighter.

Gendo yanks my arm to throw me into her, but I manage to slip free and clear his grip just in time to avoid the transfer shock when she hits him with the Taser in her hand, plus a second one she produces from her pocket.

“Get to the back door!” she screams, sounding nothing like she did before.

Gendo is still on his feet, shaking but able to move. The girl clearly knows this is the best she's going to get as I reach the back door. She releases the voltage. Gendo has to grab the nearest pole to remain upright, but he does. Running in my direction, the girl in the black hoodie sweeps a shoulder bag off the floor that I don't even notice until it's in her hands. Gendo stumbles behind her like a drunken sumo wrestler, but as the train slows into the next station he is able to find his balance.

“Pull the emergency release!” she yells.

She is talking about the lever to release the rear door, which she's now running full speed toward. I grab the lever and pull it just as she leaps into the air. Grabs the poles on either side of the door and uses both her legs to kick it. The door flies off its frame and topples over. She climbs over it and maneuvers out the back of the train. I follow. Gendo staggers toward us. The girl grabs my elbow and pulls me to the edge. I look over. The train might be slowing but the tracks beneath us are still going by rather quickly.

“There's no easy way to do this,” she says. “Just jump.”

She's right. There's no easy way to leap off a moving object. But we do. And this is where my training kicks in.

The whole point of training is to teach your body what to do. That way, if you're ever in a pinch and your brain has other things to worry about, your body can take care of itself. That's why they call it
muscle memory
. Just like your brain, your body always remembers.

Which is why, the moment we're in the air and without even thinking about it, I'm already doing a 180 and adjusting my body to roll out on the landing.

It's a move I've done countless times before, but it feels like the very first time. My body armor keeps the ties from bruising up my torso, but that doesn't stop my arms and legs from taking a beating as I tumble behind the train and come to rest on my side with my legs bent across the rail.

There's no time to dally. I pop back onto my feet. The first thing I see is Gendo, who has lifted the detached door over his head and now throws it at me. I step back even though it'll miss me by several feet. Twenty feet up the track the train stops. Now Mr. Ito is back on his feet and coming up behind Gendo.

A hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me so hard I nearly stumble.

“Come on,” she says.

I know exactly where we are. Up ahead is an access point to one of the abandoned MTA tunnels that was once part of the old City of New York subway system. I start to point it out but she is already veering in that direction.

Whoever she is, she knows these tunnels as well as I do.

We slow from a jog to a brisk walk.

“What the hell is the matter with you!” she chides. “Are you crazy getting on a train carrying cargo? And on the last car no less. Talk about boxing yourself in. Where did you think you would go?”

“I—” I try to answer, but right at that moment a pit opens up in my stomach, and the tunnel around me begins to spin. Hot. Faint. I've never felt like this before. The onset is so sudden it causes me to keel over. I feel like I'm about to drop to the ground. The girl appears unsurprised by this. In fact, she's already on top of it. From her bag she removes a large energy bar, catches the corner of the wrapper in her teeth and tears it open, folds back the foil, and practically shoves it into my face. I grab it. Take a huge bite. Chew. Swallow. She tears open another for herself as I gobble up the remains of the first.

“Well?”

“I…didn't.”

“Birdbrain.”

“Wait a second, who are you?”

“You mean besides the person who just saved your ass?” She steps under a tunnel light, leans over, and raises the leg of her cargo pants. Tattooed on her calf is a regal looking bird about to perch on a stump. Hers is colored all in brown except for the scarlet tailfeathers stretching down toward her ankle, but it has that same watchful eye.

“I'm Red Tail,” she says.

“Red Tail…” I hadn't thought about what I might say if I ever met another Ave. The way Cyril made it sound, it wasn't likely to ever happen. “What is that, a hawk?”

Great
, I think.
Wonderful
. Here's someone who can possibly answer any question I might have about running for Arcadian, and I ask her about her bird.

“Yes, it's a hawk.”

A very long and awkward moment passes between us as she just stands there looking at me like I've forgotten something.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Haven't you ever played this game before? I showed you mine now you show me yours.”

Oh, my tag. I raise my sleeve to show it to her. Clearly she is impressed.

“Nice work,” she comments.

“Thanks.”

“That was meant for Snake.”

“Oh.” There is a noise in the tunnel behind us. Something like a wooden stick hitting a metal pipe. “Are they following us?”

“Not likely,” she says. “Ito doesn't like getting his suits dirty, and Gendo is just dead weight in the tunnels. But we should keep moving.”

Red Tail and I continue down the tunnel. For a moment I consider inquiring about her real name but decide against it. That's something Cyril was adamant about. Besides, if she told me hers then I would have to tell her mine, right? Quid pro quo, just like the tags.

“Who were those guys?” I ask.

“Data disruptors.”

“Why would they cut off my arm like that? Don't they know it'll destroy the data?”

“They're counting on it.”

“Huh?”

“There's something you need to understand about this business. Sometimes destroying your rival's data can be just as valuable as stealing it. There are two kinds of interceptors you will run into in the field—retrievers and disruptors. Retrievers are the easier of the two to elude because their primary objective is to recover your cargo intact. That means they can't do anything to you that might damage what's in your wing.”

“My wing?”

“The arm that carries the data. That's your wing. Disruptors are different. Their mission is to terminate the transport at all cost, usually by destroying your cargo en route. Disruptors have no interest in recovering your cargo. Their primary objective is to stop you from making delivery. Ito and Gendo are independent contractors. Until recently, we never had to worry about them because they were mostly contracted by midlevel companies who farmed that stuff out, and we're mostly chased by megacorporations who do all that stuff in-house. Shanghai International, Caliphate Global, Grumwell—they all have massive internal security divisions to handle these things. Not to mention Blackburn, whose entire concern is paramilitary security. Believe me, they're the last one you want on your tail.”

“Okay, so if Arcadian runners never had to worry about Ito and Gendo before, what changed?”

“They got hired by a mega.”

“Wait, you just said—”

“I know what I said,” Red Tail interjects. “The rumor is, somebody stole something so big it could potentially bring down an entire megacorporation all by itself.”

“I thought the megas were too big to fail.”

“Too big to fail is never so big it can't be destroyed. Apparently, whatever this thing is, it's so damning that the people looking for it can't even trust their own internal security. That's why they hired disruptors. They don't even want it back. They just want it gone.”

“So why did they come after me?” I recall the crappy little office where I made my pickup. “I don't know what I'm carrying, but I'm pretty sure it's not that.”

“Because whoever stole the information loaded it into a data runner and put it on the sneakernet to keep it secure. Now there's a blind relay going on. Nobody knows where or when, but each day the cargo is passed from one data runner to the next. They're not running the cargo for delivery, they're just running it to keep it in motion. Ito and Gendo must be completely out of leads, because now they're clipping every runner they come across. Hacking and stacking arms until they find it. That's why they came after you.”

“Is it possible the load is being moved by an Arcadian runner?”

She shrugs. “Anything's possible.”

Red Tail stops for a moment and produces her thin screen from her bag. The translucent glow lights up her face like a ghost as her fingers navigate the device, and I know at once that hers is no ordinary thin screen. Trains and stations all have open signal relays to the surface, but the tunnels themselves don't, particularly the old abandoned ones. The only way to get a signal this far off the rails is by tapping into the nearest service relay. Which means that, just like mine, her thin screen has been flashed to port into the undernet. And that can only mean one thing.

“You're Morlock,” I say.

She confirms with a quick nod. “So is Snake. Most of us are. I think it's one of the things Cyril looks for.” It's only as an afterthought that she asks about me.

I nod. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“Not officially, but I've been operating as Morlock for years so it's really just a technicality. For some reason Moreau refuses to reach out to me. I don't know why, but when I find him that's the first thing I'm going to ask.”

“When you find him?” she asks with incredulity. “Don't tell me you're tracking Moreau?”

“He's my white whale.”

Red Tail stares at me through the glow of her thin screen.

“That's from
Moby Dick
,” I add.

“Yes, I know the white whale is from
Moby Dick
, birdbrain. I just don't know what to make of it. Ahab lost his leg to the whale. What's your reason? And don't say it's because he hasn't invited you into the club yet. That's stupid.”

Now I'm left without a response. It may be stupid, but it's the only reason I have.

For the second time in fifty feet Red Tail stops and looks around.

“What is it?”

She shakes her head. “Have you noticed that we haven't seen a single rat since we've been down here?”

“Oh, there's a reason for that,” I tell her. It never would have occurred to me that the thing she found odd was the lack of rodents. I was so used to it by now that I would have been surprised if we had seen one. I open my backpack and remove a homemade device that is basically just a small project box with an on/off toggle, three stub antennas, and a red LED indicator that is currently on. I hand it to her. The way she turns it over in her hand, examining it closely and with genuine curiosity, that's when I know for sure she's a techie. “It emits a signal that drives away all rodents within five meters.”

Red Tail turns the box to examine a second switch on the side. That one is inset and locked to prevent it from being flipped accidentally. “What does this do?” she asks.

That was Dexter's idea. I still had no idea what the application would be; I just built it because I wanted to see if it would work. Unfortunately, we never got around to finding out because neither one of us wanted to be the person standing there with the device in his hands when the switch got flipped. “I haven't tested it yet,” I say, “but it inverts the signal.”

Red Tail considers this as she hands it back. “Interesting.”

We continue down the tunnel for a while and veer left at the split. That's when I realize we're heading in the exact direction I need to go in order to make my delivery. Red Tail knows exactly where I'm supposed to be, and she's taking me there.

“What were you doing on the train?” I ask.

“Liddy sent me. She couldn't let you step into the grinder on your first run. She told Cyril that it was way too soon to put you on a decoy run. Nobody gets red-herringed their first time out. But Cyril disagreed. In case you haven't noticed, he's a real sink-or-swim kind of guy. You should be flattered. You didn't hear this from me, but Cyril has real high hopes for you. I think this was his way of throwing you against the wall to see if you'd stick. That's why—”

“Wait, wait. Hold on.” She's going a mile a minute and I have no idea who or what she's talking about. “Who's Liddy, and what's a decoy run?”

“Boy, you really are a newb. Alright. Don't worry about Liddy. As she always says, her job keeps her in the blinds.”

“Who is she?”

“She's the Birdwatcher. You won't know it, but she'll always have eyes on you. As for the decoy run, sometimes when a cargo is especially valuable, they'll hire two Aves to make the run. One carries the real cargo; the other carries the decoy. The second is called the
red herring
because it diverts attention away from the real transport. In this case, that's you. You're the decoy, my fine feathered friend.”

“No, that can't be right. They gave me an envelope to get me out of there. That was the red herring. Why would they have done that if—”

But the more I talk, the more obvious it is. I've been duped. A brown envelope? Just who was that supposed to fool? I mean besides me. It's like a game of chess. The brown envelope was a gambit. They knew security wouldn't buy it, and that was their plan all along. They wanted security to finger me as the runner because really I'm not. My whole cargo, this whole run was one big brown envelope. I am the red herring.

“You see?” she asks.

“I see.”

“Decoy runs are particularly rough because they're designed to draw the fire. They always meet resistance. The only runner who's ever gotten through one without incident is Snake.”

“How'd he do that?”

But Red Tail only shakes her head. “He calls it the Lemmon–Curtis Bluff. If you want to know any more than that you'll have to ask him yourself. Anyway, the Birdwatcher knew you would need some help so she sent me to shadow you.”

“But you were already on the train.”

Again she shakes her head. “Gendo and Ito were tracking you from the top of the stairs where you couldn't see them. They came down and jumped on at the last second. I was on the other side of the pillar less than five feet away from you. I stepped onto the train two seconds after you did.”

“I didn't see you.”

“That's because your eyes were on the redhead, who by the way had
NOT ME
written all over that pretty little face. Her body language was all wrong. That's lesson number one, birdbrain. Keep your blood in your head.”

“Stop calling me birdbrain.”

Red Tail laughs. “Come on, you have to expect a little hazing.”

Red Tail turns her attention back to her thin screen, and we walk in silence for a few minutes, giving me a chance to take in everything she's just told me. But soon her expression changes, seemingly from some disturbing piece of information she's just received.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Look, you've come into this at a very awkward time. This is going to sound paranoid, but it's the best piece of advice I can give you right now. Trust no one. Do you hear me?
No one
.”

“Wouldn't
no one
include you?”

“That's your choice. If you don't trust me, it's on you. And if you do trust me then you can trust Snake as well, because he's the only one I trust right now. Him and Liddy, but like I said, she's always in the blinds.”

“What's this about?”

“It's better that you don't know. I'm only giving you a heads up so you don't get blindsided when you least expect it. What I'm saying is, expect it. Even from someone inside Arcadian.”

Everything has happened so fast that it's only now, as I replay it in my head, that I finally realize I'd be lying on a train in a pool of my own blood right now if it weren't for her. Even if I survived it, my arm would be long gone. So I guess at the very least I owe her an arm's length of trust. Besides, if she had meant me any harm, all she had to do was sit back and let it happen. So when Red Tail tells me not to trust anyone else at Arcadian, there is no reason I shouldn't trust her about that.

“I have a load to pick up,” she blurts suddenly. “You can find your way to the drop-off point from here.”

“But if I'm just the decoy runner then do I even have to make the delivery?”

“Always. Most of the time you won't even know when you're a decoy runner, but even if you do, you always have to make the delivery. That's the job. Remember, people hire us when security is the only option. We can't mess around with that. Even when you're the red herring, you have to keep going until the cargo is secure.”